


My Heart Was Colder When You'd Gone

by LadyofAvalon



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Post-6x06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 08:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7927540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyofAvalon/pseuds/LadyofAvalon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sara finds out on a Monday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Heart Was Colder When You'd Gone

**Author's Note:**

> This is another fic I found sitting in my harddrive gathering dust from right after I'd seen the finale for the first time. The title is from Whispers in the Dark by Mumford & Sons.

Sara finds out on a Monday. The call comes in from Peter when she is at work and in the middle of dealing with a high-profile client. Her assistant leans in and tells her she has a call on line one and it's important. What could be more important than a client?

She excuses herself and returns to her office to take the call. Something does not sit right with her and she picks up the phone suspiciously.

"Sara Ellis."

"Sara, this is Peter Burke."

She pauses. She has not spoken to Peter in months. A letter from Neal arrived last week, but she has not heard from anyone else since Peter was released from prison. "It's good to hear from you, Peter."

"It's been a while," Peter says.

She can tell that there's something wrong. She can hear the weight in Peter's voice. "Is everything alright?"

Peter sighs. "No. It's not."

Her stomach drops. "What happened?" She wants to ask if Neal is okay, but she is terrified of the answer.

"He's dead." Peter's voice cracks. "Neal's dead, Sara."

The world crashes down around her. "What?"

"Keller shot him."

She feels like she cannot breathe. She reaches out to steady herself against her desk. She cannot even find words to respond to Peter. The only sound that comes out of her mouth is a strangled sob.

Peter takes that opportunity to tell her when the funeral is but she can hardly hear him. She dimly registers an apology before the line clicks and she's greeted by dead space.

The phone slips out of her hand and clatters against her desk. She hardly notices.

It is only when her assistant comes to check on her and finds her on the ground next to her desk with tears coursing down her cheeks that she realizes that she cannot do this – not now.

She waves away the other woman's offer to reschedule the rest of her clients. Instead she pulls out the mirror from her desk drawer, wipes away her tears, and fixes her makeup.

There is some hesitation when she returns to the conference room, as if they can see her pain. She picks up right where she left off and tries to push the memories of his lips on her skin out of her mind.

By the time all of her meetings are over it feels like everything is weighed down. She feels like she is sinking and it is suffocating. The streets of London swallow her. It is a blur, her heels clicking against the pavement and her hand on the comforting weight of the baton she already knows she cannot use. It makes her feel safer.

She locks the door behind her and kicks off her shoes, dropping her purse and spilling the contents on the floor beside her. She presses her back against the door just to remain standing. Everything feels so strange, like she is watching herself stumble through her apartment on autopilot.

Neal is gone. Damn him.

She should have known he would get himself into trouble sooner or later. That was part of who he was – he got himself into tight spots and then got himself right back out. Usually with the FBI on his side. She knew he had come to rely on them more and more over the last few years. Was that what had undone him? Was it trying to bring down a mark that was too big?

She is still on autopilot when she pulls out a wineglass and looks for a bottle of red – it does not matter what vintage, just something good. Something familiar. She stops in the middle of her kitchen with a bottle in hand, staring at the label. Then she backtracks, sliding the bottle back where it came from and chooses another one. One she thought she would drink to celebrate Neal's freedom with him if he ever came to visit her in London once the anklet was off. The label almost makes her cry again.

She can almost hear his voice when she pulls out the cork. She can still remember the look in his eyes the last time she walked away from him. She can see the longing that she felt then – that she still feels now. She can still remember the sound of his voice when he proposed. It might have been a show, but it was more real than either of them wanted to admit.

The words tumble through her mind over and over again as she pours herself a glass and sips it. It is everything she hoped it would be when she saw that it was a Bordeaux. She is grateful that it is not a 1982 Bordeaux. She already knows that story and how it ended. But the thought remains – it was an unspoken promise. A promise that he would always be there – that he would do everything in his power to stay.

It is a promise that Neal Caffrey broke. He was not supposed to die. Sara curses him for it.

She is not sure she wants to know what happened. She is not even sure she wants to go to the funeral Peter told her about. The thought of going to the funeral takes her breath away. If she goes then she has to admit that Neal is really gone.

She is curled up on her couch with her bottle of wine when the tears come again. She cannot stop them from spilling down her cheeks.

They were just friends – that was all they could be after everything that happened. But she loved him. She loved him and she hated herself for it. She always knew something like this would happen. Someday, all of Neal's luck would catch up to him and that would be it. It would all be over.

She never should have let herself fell in love with a criminal. She had told herself she knew what she was getting into when she had let Neal into her life. She was wrong. She was not prepared to lose him. Not like this.

The wine makes her dizzy. By the time she puts the cork back in the bottle and puts it away she realizes that it is not just the wine. She still feels like she cannot breathe and the world is spinning around her. She can still feel him touching her – his arm around her waist and the warmth of his body against hers. He is a phantom with bright eyes and a charming smile.

She pauses before she finishes her wine, raising the glass to look at one of the last remnants of Neal in her life. He is impossible to forget. No one could forget beauty with such chaos in his wake. What they could have been is impossible to forget. She thinks it would be cliché to say she does not want to. She can still see the last time they were together in her mind's eye, the proposal and the tears that she still wished were real. She can still remember the last things they said to each other.

_To another time, another place. To another us._


End file.
